For: IUW-FI
In a lot of countries the feminist movement is organising the new international strike for our rights. With meetings and assemblies, we get ready to promote a new internationalist, anti-patriarchy and anti-capitalist day of struggle and mobilisation to get our demands.
Almost 110 years have passed since Clara Zetkin proposed 8 March as the International Day for Women Workers, in the Second Conference of Socialist Women in 1910, to vindicate the fight of women workers for the eight-hour journey, for better working conditions, for the right to vote, among others. Today we have the challenge of organising a great #HuelgaFeminista (Feminist Strike) so the women workers do not pay for the crisis.
Undoubtedly, we are living the fourth wave of feminist struggle throughout the world. With demonstrations, street actions and strikes, the 8 March was a hard-hitting international day of struggle. In 2018 we faced the austerity plans implemented by the capitalist governments, which directly affects women, being the worst paid, the more affective by flexible jobs and head of the poorest homes. The patriarchal capitalist system uses the millenarian oppression of women to «over-exploit» us and get greater profit. That is why we fight for capitalism and patriarchy to fall together. From Woman’s March in the US against Trump, Palestinian women who resist the attacks of the Zionist State of Israel up to the South Korean women against sexual abuse, passing through the demonstrations in Latin America against femicides and for the right to legal and safe abortion, the feminist movement is on its feet and fighting. During the second International Women’s Strike (2018), millions of people took to the streets to condemn the wage gap that reaches 23 percent in the world. With demonstrations, street actions and strikes, the 8 March was a hard-hitting international day of struggle.
In 2018, we faced the austerity plans implemented by the capitalist governments, the IMF and the EU, downloading the crisis on workers and the people with redundancies, suspensions, major exploitation and the rise of retirement age. We also face anti migration and xenophobic laws and in solidarity with the rights of refugees and migrants of the world. We took to the streets to fight the austerity plans implemented by the capitalist governments, which directly affects women, being the worst paid, the more affective by flexible jobs and head of the poorest homes. That is why we say there is a growing «feminisation» of poverty. The patriarchal capitalist system uses the millenarian oppression of women to «over-exploit» us and get greater profit. That is why we fight for capitalism and patriarchy to fall together.
In Brazil, the feminist movement heads the resistance against the «neofascist» Bolsonaro with the #EleNao. French women are part of the «yellow vests» against the austerity measures of Macron’s conservative government. In Bangladesh, women in the textile industry fight against the meagre salaries and over exploitation of the second largest textile industry in the world, where the multinational companies obtain super-earnings with the semi-slave job. In Latin America, the indigenous women fight mega-mining companies and the plunder of multinationals.
The green wave in Argentina continues fighting for the right to decide and expands throughout Latin America, being the region of the world where the most restrictive legislations on abortion exist, and where both the capitalist governments and the Catholic and Evangelical cults get together to deny that right. With the struggle, we could get the right to legal abortion in Ireland and we unmasked the reactionary role of the Catholic Church, denying rights when paedophile scandals exploded worldwide.
The rebellion against sexual violence and the movement #MeToo grew and from Hollywood rapidly expanded. Pandora’s box opened with thousands of accusations. In the Spanish State millions mobilised against the ruling of the patriarchal justice in the case of the Manada. In Chile, the Feminist May took place, with tens of universities and schools occupied by their students against harassment and sexual violence. Thousands of accusations turned up in Argentina with the slogan #MiraComoNosPonemos (See How We Are).
The feminist movement took to the streets to say #NiUnaMenos (Not One Less), #VivasNosQueremos (We Want Us Alive). According to the Latin America and the Caribbean Gender Equality Observatory, based on the information provided by 16 countries of the area and the Spanish State, 2,554 women have been victims of femicides in 2017. Few days ago, the Mexican women organised a great day against kidnappings for trafficking and femicides, in a country where there are 9 femicides per week and a great score of machist violence. It is important to emphasize that trafficking is the second most profitable illicit business. 21 million people are victims of it, 70 percent women and girls, used for sexual and labour exploitation, with impunity from the governments.
This 8 March, we have to develop mobilisations around the world and a feminist general strike against femicides and all forms of gender violence, against pay gap, for legal abortion, against women and children trafficking for sexual exploitation and against the austerity plans around the world. The capitalist governments and the different cults are responsible. The IWU-FI call for a day of struggle on 8 March for the world to feel what the feminist movement demands, on the way to build a movement to fight together with the rest of the oppressed and the workers, to end with the patriarch capitalism and for a society without oppression and exploitation and for a socialist system where we will be socially equal, humanly different and completely free.
International Unit for Workers and the Fourth International
February 20, 2019
